AWOL

I'll have to ask MedPundit or DB's MedRants if there is a recognized medical condition known as "'No Watermelons Allowed' Withdrawal Syndrome". If so, no doubt you've suffered immensely over the last few days. But I'm not the only slacker around nowadays.

Well, I shouldn't call our dear Susanna that - she's getting some grad school work done in lieu of blogging. Attagirl!

Meanwhile somewhere in the wilderness of Arkansas a Rottweiler attacked Vicki of Liquid Courage. The lovely Vicki needed stitches in her face? - say it ain't so, Matt! (As for the Rottweiler, give it to Glenn Reynolds).

And Tacitus is having problems with, um, his back end. But he'll be back.

So what's my excuse...?

Links between Iraq and terrorism

Courtesy of Sean LaFreniere

Oh shut up

Did anyone see Bull Durham? In it Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins screwed each other senseless. And judging from recent remarks, neither have recovered to this day. I don't have time for an exhaustive list, but you can have a taste below.

Recently Sarandon's suffered this. Too bad for her - she would have received a hefty fee for promoting volunteerism.

More recently it's Robbins' turn, complaining of a "chill wind" even as he threatens harm to a reporter for writing about his family here (courtesy of Hawspipe, who seems to think that paying work takes precedence over blogging).

Rodney King, your 15 minutes are up

Acidman talks about Rodney King's latest adventure, driving his SUV into a house at 100 MPH.

Which reminds me of a line I heard a few years ago from George Wallace after another RK misadventure. That time King drove into a wall. Wallace said something like "That wall was white - it hit him".

I can't find a cite for this one either, but I recall that a few years ago the leader of a suburban Chicago chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Drivers was killed sleeping in her bed when a drunk driver came crashing through her house.

Melungeons

The May 2003 Discover magazine also discusses Melungeons.

Say what? Actually, it's a who:

It comes as no surprise that Elvis Presley, Ava Gardner, and Abraham Lincoln may be among their kin, yet the members of this tribe have never fitted properly into American racial categories. Depending on the census taker or tax man, they were classified as white, "free persons of color", or mulatto, often drifting across the color line as they moved from county to county....There are perhaps as many as 200,000 Melungeons in the United States today, all descended from a mysterious colony of olive-skinned people who lived for centuries in the foothills of the Appalachians. Some say the Melungeons can be traced back to Portuguese sailors, shipwrecked in the 16th century, or to colonial-era Turkish silk workers. Others point to Gypsies, to Sir Francis Drake's lost colony of Roanoke, or to the ancient Phoenicians. It's not even clear where the word Melungeon comes from: it might be derived from the French word mélange or even a corruption of an Arabic or Turkish term for "cursed souls".

The article goes on to discuss attempts to research Melungeon heritage using DNA methods. This is a big deal because of the racial ambiguity - historically they have been been known to be taken to court for attempting to vote, or hanged for marrying white women.

One can see why Melungeons would have issues with racism, but then others aren't so sure they want to find their true ancestry. One researcher says he got a death threat from a Melungeon "repelled by the possibility of having African-American blood".

The article also mentions other groups similarly "isolated" genetically, such as Louisiana's Red Bones or the South Carolina Brass Ankles. Much more can be found here.

Turkey - our next oil source?

Who needs Iraq and the rest of the Middle East when we can get oil from Turkey?

No, not that one. The kind you eat for Thanksgiving.

If you haven't heard of Brian Appel, CEO of Changing World Technologies, maybe it's time you did. The most recent (May 2003) Discover magazine describes the company's thermal depolymerization process (TDP) as follows:

The process is designed to handle almost any waste product imaginable, including turkey offal, tires, plastic bottles, harbor-dredged muck, old computers, municipal garbage, cornstalks, paper-pulp effluent, infectious medical waste, oil-refinery residues, even biological weapons such as anthrax spores. According to Appel, waste goes in one end and comes out the other as three products, all valuable and environmentally benign: high quality oil, clean burning gas and purified minerals that can be used as fuels, fertilizers or specialty chemicals for manufacturing.

Unlike other solid-to-liquid--fuel processes such as cornstarch into ethanol, this one will accept almost any carbon-based feedstock. If a 175-pound man fell into one end, he would come out the other end as 38 pounds of oil, 7 pounds of gas, and 7 pounds of minerals, as well as 123 pounds of sterilized water.

Also

Private investors, who have chipped in $40 million to develop the process, aren't the only ones who are impressed. The federal government has granted more then $12 million to push the work along. "We will be able to make oil for $8 to $12 a barrel," says Paul Baskis, the inventor of the process. "We are going to be able to switch to a carbohydrate economy"

A few other points:

• They can get about 100 units of energy in the feedstock at a cost of only about 15 units of heat input.
• "The EPA doesn't even consider us waste handlers. We are actually manufacturers - that's what our permit says".
• The process is scalable - plants can be sized to handle between a ton and 4000 tons of waste per day.

Pie in the sky? There's a full-scale plant here in Missouri, at Carthage outside a turkey processing plant. Each day 200 tons of turkey offal will be transformed into products such as 600 barrels of light oil. Lest you should miss the point, there's a big picture of the input with the article.

If you're at all interested in energy technologies, you can't miss this article. As this is written there is no link to the full article, but maybe it will show up after the next issue is released.

General Tommy Franks Can't Wait to Retire

From Scrappleface.

Ex-Presidents Carter and Clinton, take heed.

Lileks vs. electricity

Right here.

People have some strange ideas about electricity. I have an uncle that is convinced it is out to get him. He'll change light bulbs, plug things in and flip switches, but don't let him see any bare wires. And he would have been amazed at the Animal Planet show I saw yesterday in which a dog flipped a light switch with his mouth.

Alright, getting zapped by electricity isn't much fun. I literally stuck my finger in a lightsocket once in my preteens. I concluded that I had learned everything I needed to know from that experience and thus didn't need to repeat it. Likewise it only took one self-administered zapping with a cattle prod to impress me. But early on I noticed the strange sensation you get when you put your tongue across a 9V battery, and it's still a quick and dirty way to see if it still has any life.

If you're careful you can work 120V circuits "hot", but I wouldn't recommend it for everyone. If you're careless when hooking up phone wires it's possible to get 48VDC, which will get your attention. Lesser voltages are no big deal though.

Once at work I was inspecting one of my systems when I got bit when I touched the metal sheath around some calcium silicate insulation and something that was grounded at the same time. A minute or so later I got bit again in a different spot the same way. It felt a bit weaker than a phone zapping, so I told our electricians about it and told them I'd felt about 40V.

To the amusement of the electricians, I was within a volt or two. It turned out that some heat tracing wires (installed to keep pipes warm and thus keep solids from coming out of solution) had been damaged by the metal around the insulation, and this metal was not grounded. That is, until I touched it while I was grounded. I'm lucky the damage wasn't closer to the hot end of the wire.

Enough thrills and chills for one day - my post about grounding and electrical codes will have to wait until later. Try not to get electrocuted in the meantime.

SARS catchall

No sooner do I mention Arthur Silber and Steven Den Beste a few posts below and I find myself citing them both.

Arthur Silber points out the dangers of govt censorship as it applies to the Chinese SARS outbreak here. In the comments someone points to SDB here about an interesting and IMO plausible theory about China as the incubator of influenza.

My two cents is for an article in NRO I almost blogged a couple of weeks ago when it first came out:

Not very long ago — within the past five years, let's say — an American businessman of my acquaintance, a leading figure in the health-care field, was approached by an authoritative official of the Chinese government with a truly fabulous offer. How would the American like to set up a nationwide network of clinics, under his own name and with clear American identification? He would provide the medicine, the staff, the doctors, the technology. The Chinese would provide the money, the land, the labor force to build the clinics, and guarantee a substantial profit for at least a decade.

The American was impressed; who wouldn't be? And of course he was curious. Why were they being so generous?

The answer helps understand why it took so long for the Chinese to fess up to the existence of the new Viral pneumonia. The Chinese official put it this way: "we are having a terrible time getting people to see doctors, even for routine physical checkups. And this is because of an event that took place back in the late 1940s, following Mao's revolution. At that time, the government promised to eradicate venereal disease in China. And it did. Everyone was forced to undergo an examination by a certified doctor. And anyone with venereal disease was executed. Ever since, most Chinese stayed far away from medical doctors."

So the current regime, which would like to improve the health of the population, thought that it might be possible to get the people to a doctor if that doctor were clearly separate from the government. Indeed, as far removed from Chinese officialdom as one could imagine: an American doctor in an American clinic that guaranteed utter privacy.

From which Ledeen suggests:

I'm not so sure that the authorities were keeping the information from the people. It may well be that the people were keeping it from the authorities.

I for one have a hard time seeing our govt ever doing anything as radical as Mao's Chinese allegedly did. But I notice that a lot of people who push govt involvement in health care seem to have issues with John Ashcroft. Alright liberals - would you like Ashcroft or any other terrifying "Christian right-wingers" to have access to your health care records?

Then again, what is to be done to control epidemics? Should we apply the same standards we did with AIDS, in which the risk of stigmatizing people was given more weight than concerns for general public health?

Somebody gets it

An Egyptian, a Pakistani and some Kuwaitis discuss the US and Iraq.

Keep the UN out of Iraq

Years ago mathematician Pierre Fermat left an interesting theorem written in the margin of one of his books. He said he had discovered a wonderful proof which the margin was too small to contain. It turns out he was right.

With that in mind, and not having the time or inclination to write a Steven Den Beste or Arthur Silber length item needed to back it up, I simply offer my conclusions about UN involvement in Iraq below.

The UN should have nothing to do with reestablishing a new govt in Iraq.

Why?

1. We see what types of govt the UN approves of. Typically socialist or dictatorial, and corrupt.

2. We see what types of policies the UN approves of.

3. A viable govt cannot be created with such policies.

4. If the UN is involved, such a nonviable govt will be created anyway. And it will fail.

5. The UN wants it to fail, lest its success should encourage further such liberations at the expense of the despots who have such disproportionate influence there now.

6. Said failure will be blamed on the US no matter what we do.

Just what is the UN bringing to the party?

Credibility? Forget it.

Money? Only if they get more of it from the US, and this will increase the relative power of an organization that has shown itself antithetical to US interests constantly.

Competence and experience? Don't make me laugh.

Integrity? Ditto.

The UN is about providing sinecures for international bureaucrats who have delusions of grandeur. Its continued existence is of value only as an example of what we could expect from world government.

Burning the evidence

Iraqi embassies sure are doing a lot of lawn care lately - they wouldn't be burning anything else besides grass clippings, right?

James S. Robbins talks about it here.

Now it can be told

Via the NYT:

ATLANTA — Over the last dozen years I made 13 trips to Baghdad to lobby the government to keep CNN's Baghdad bureau open and to arrange interviews with Iraqi leaders. Each time I visited, I became more distressed by what I saw and heard — awful things that could not be reported because doing so would have jeopardized the lives of Iraqis, particularly those on our Baghdad staff.

For example, in the mid-1990's one of our Iraqi cameramen was abducted. For weeks he was beaten and subjected to electroshock torture in the basement of a secret police headquarters because he refused to confirm the government's ludicrous suspicion that I was the Central Intelligence Agency's Iraq station chief. CNN had been in Baghdad long enough to know that telling the world about the torture of one of its employees would almost certainly have gotten him killed and put his family and co-workers at grave risk.

There's much more. Link stolen from The Corner.

DanceSport 103 - getting started

Alright, you're sold - dancing is for you. But...

Standard disclaimers. I'm not a physician, and if I were I don't know jack about you anyway, so you know the rules - see a doctor before starting any exercise program.

That said, it can be as much or as little exercise as you want. If you're recovering from years of couch-potatoing, the easiest place to start would be with smooth dancing like foxtrot. It's slow, and in its easiest forms is much like walking. Rumba is slow too, but there is more lateral motion which might bug your hips. Bad knees might slow you down a little, but then you might strengthen them too if you give it a chance (yeah, I'm talking to you...).

If you're in good shape already, the place to start is probably with east coast swing, or what the locals call Imperial swing after a long defunct ballroom. It and variants like jitterbug can go about as fast as you might want to. Cha-cha will also get you moving, and it'll loosen up your hips if you do it right.

Alright, you know what to learn - now where to go? If you're totally green, a local community college is probably the best place. That way classes start everybody in the same place. You might think that would go without saying, but that's not necessarily true at a dance studio. I know I've walked into some nominal "beginner" classes that IMO were too advanced or else moved too quickly for raw beginners. It can be very frustrating - I for one am not used to being at the bottom of the class, especially in one where everyone else can grade you.

Or if you'd rather limit the number of people who witness your development, there's always private lessons. Maybe you're lucky enough to have a friend who knows a few things so you can get by cheap. In the worst case, here in St. Louis private lessons from certified teachers have run as low as <$30 per hour with an extended agreement and a new studio, but you'd better budget at $50.

But you don't have a partner? No problem. There are usually extra partners of one sex or the other in a group class, usually women, and instructors usually have you rotate partners so nobody stays alone for long. You might wind up dancing by yourself part of the time, but that lets you watch the others and practice by yourself until you get a better feel for what they're teaching (or just convince yourself that the others are having trouble too). Also, instructors might try to shuffle people around between classes to even things up, and usually the women are willing to dance with other women if one of them knows the man's part of the dance.

But the other dancers are older/younger/uglier than I am! So what? - I'm assuming that you're there to learn to dance. Assuming that the person isn't so fat or feeble that they literally can't move, you can't tell much about who the good dancers are just by looking at them away from the dance floor. And they won't all be particularly attractive. (Yo young guys in particular - remember the wise counsel of Benjamin Franklin (beware of a tame nude picture). Things you learn with the older women just might come in handy with other women). But I've found dancers to be a friendly accepting bunch, and assuming you possess rudimentary knowledge of manners, dress and hygiene, and you put forth decent effort to learn, you'll do fine.

Now it's time to hit the street. Dance studios and other organizations often sponsor dances to drum up business. My experience is that as long as you don't pretend to be something you aren't, your partners will be very understanding with beginners. Then you have an instant excuse to meet anyone you want for three minutes of intimacy.

Alright, you've run out of excuses. Out on the floor, now!

Naked Quidditch!

Tomorrow the second Harry Potter movie hits the shelves, so I'll get one if I have to wrestle it from the sticky hands of a dewy-eyed moppet. Well, probably not from Gnat, but only because she's up in Minneapolis.

And that was before DPM pointed me to Naked Quidditch.

Before you ask, Quidditch is a coed game, and Gryffindor has some babes playing for them. Savvy?

Needed - conservative Michael Moore

Well, maybe that title needs work. We don't need another Michael Moore of any stripe unless energy shortages dictate a return to whale oil.

I haven't actually seen it, but from what I've heard "Bowling for Columbine" doesn't rise to the standards set by the old Clinton conspiracy tapes. Why don't the more intellectually defensible parts of our political spectrum fight back? Is it that they don't have anyone so mean and dishonest as Moore?

There's plenty of material nowadays, what with all of the antiwar idiocy. Unions, especially teacher's unions, are ripe for abuse. And how about dimwit lefty celebrities like those mentioned here and here? Or a travelogue that shows that Eden otherwise known as ANWR, spiced with some of the hysterical ecobabble in defense of it?

Libertarians might want to see PJ O'Rourke make a movie out of "All the Trouble in the World", or "Parliament of Whores". Or imagine what Penn Jillette or Dave Barry could come up with.

I'd like to see what you could get from a team of conservatives like Rob Long, Larry Miller, Jonah Goldberg and the staff from the old Rush Limbaugh TV show.

Come on guys, what are you waiting for?

What's the best golf book?

I've decided that I don't have enough vices, so lately I've started golfing. Still driving range stuff so far, in a community college group class, but I'm coming along.

Is there anything I should be reading? I've heard people rave about Harvey Penick's Little Red Book, so I'm checking it out. What else? How about videos or DVDs?

A skit begging to happen

Iraq's information minister is almost beyond parody, but James S. Robbins tries it here.

Surely SNL or Mad TV will take him on.

Fighting the left, doing it right

...at the ProtestWarrior.

Via Blog O'Dob.

Setting the record straight

Jay Nordlinger of NRO is always a good read, and lately he's written some items worthy of inclusion in this blog. About Frenches and mustard.

Here he mentions a press release for French's Mustard, which notes that it is all-American. In fact, it was introduced nearly 100 years ago right here in St. Louis along with the then-newfangled hotdog. So don't let that name fool you.

Just in case that wasn't enough, he published an email here which said "Dear Jay: Just because French's is yellow doesn't mean it's French."

Elsewhere in the same item was another email:

"Dear Jay: My sympathies to French's Mustard. [This refers to an Impromptus item from Friday.] My last name (by marriage) is French. My ex-husband had not a single tiny drop of French blood in his family tree. I don't know where the name came from. But now, I am honestly considering changing my and my kids' names to something else. My son (twelve years old) is being harassed and bullied for having the name 'French' and kids are accusing him of being French, which is an enormous insult and the kids all know it. I don't whether this will blow over or not."

Take pride in your name. I can't find it just now, but I'll swear I recently read something that said that that name came from Scotland and was an abbreviated form of "killer of Frenchmen" or the like.

Enough Frog-bashing for now. After all, I'm a Kraut.

Brilliant

It should be easy to spot Steve Brill nowadays. He'll be eating lunch all by himself.

Why? He has a book out which dares to suggest that Homeland Security is working.

Whether you agree with that or not, it is remarkable that Brill is the man who wrote the book. Up until now he was probably best known for a nasty hit piece on Ken Starr in the debut issue of his now-failed magazine Brill's Content. But now

"He is a laughing stock!" mocked one network executive, who has been a friend of the self-described "lapsed-liberal" for more than 10 years.

Brill has been telling associates how arguments over the 700-page book have "nearly become violent."

This I've got to see.

Sean McCray is back after a long hiatus

Right here.

Psst - want a picture of Hillary Clinton naked?

And if so, why?

Yes, Hillary Rodham Clinton has posed nude before. Read about it here.

You know who you are

Or not, most likely - there's about a 99.9999% chance you'll never read this blog. But maybe someone who does will get a hint.

No, I'm not an authority on women's beauty. But I know of a few things that women complain about wrt their looks, such as 1) sagging breasts, 2) protruding abdomen, 3) protruding buttocks, and 4) being unfashionably short.

They can help all 4 by merely standing up straight. And they'll look more elegant. And it's better for their spines too. What can be wrong with that?

Stand up straight even if you're tall (that means you too, MM). Tall is in nowadays, and tall and straight is always better than slightly less tall and slouching. It even helps with balance and coordination.

If standing up straight hurts, then you're out of shape. Working on your abs won't hurt a bit, especially with Pilates. Of course I'm not a physician and there could be other underlying issues that make this a bad idea, but if you can't even stand up straight without hurting maybe you ought to see the doctor anyway.

At last, my subject. She's about 19 and is really a doll. She has natural good looks, she takes care of herself and she dresses well, and although at her age she could use less warpaint she used it well too. So apparently she wants to look good and she generally succeeds.

But every time I see her I just want to grab her abs just below the navel from behind, pulling backwards and upwards until she stands up straighter. But however generous an act that might ultimately be, my innocent, paternal, purely esthetic motives might be misinterpreted. Ya think?

One woman told me she might be self-conscious about her bust. If so, she'd do more to hide it by wearing looser clothes and standing up straighter than with the way she dresses now. If she were flat-chested standing straighter would be worth a dozen Wonderbras.

Another woman told me there could be confidence issues. That's not inconceivable, but I have to wonder why. I don't know her too well, so about all I know about is that she's not sure what she wants to do for a permanent career. Sheesh, that's true of most 19 year olds in my experience. If this is an issue, well, sometimes acting the way you want to be can help you become that way.

In the olden days young ladies were taught to stand up straight, even going so far as to have them balance books on their heads. Corsets probably helped too. Such things typically get nothing but snarky comments nowadays, but this is not just about vanity - there really are tangible health benefits associated with good posture

Alright, I'm through venting. We'll see if I figure out a way to bring this up.

Brass ones

According to a Fox News broadcast, Dominique De Villepin doesn't think the US should be rewarded for "starting the war" in Iraq.

This is wrong in more ways than I have time to deal with. But IMO those conniving benchwarmers who sold the Iraqis their reactor and much more besides shouldn't be allowed to make so much as a dime from the rebuilding of Iraq.

One would hope that once the Iraqis regain control of their country, they'll remember who helped keep Saddam in power.

Jessica Lynch, icon

By now everyone has heard of the rescue of Jessica Lynch. I wish her the best and certainly wouldn't want to give the impression that I, from the comfort of home, was denigrating her in any way. In particular, I understand that her injuries (two leg fractures, arm injuries, a gunshot wound and a stab wound) are consistent with fighting, not torture, and it appears that she's the only survivor of her group. She must be one tough girl (not to be confused with Shannon Faulkner).

But it will be interesting to see how her experience will be spun by various groups. Who will be the winners and losers?

As for Private Lynch herself, I'm guessing she'll have more lucrative opportunities than her earlier ambition of teaching school back home. I wonder how many agents-to-be have been calling the family.

See Virginia Postrel's new site

Right here.

Among lots of other good things, she links to "Brainwaves", another Corante blog. There's just too much good stuff on it to single anything out.

"Mommy, where do Easter eggs come from?"

Now we know, courtesy of 3 Bruces. Warning - the image could be too intense for some viewers...

100 Best April Fool's Gags

Right here.

Coal to Newcastle

According to this link at Command Post, the US Army estimates it costs $150/gallon for fuel in Iraq.

Saddam's bodyguard

James Robbins discusses interesting behavior by Saddam's bodyguard in NRO.

Why didn't I think of that?

Juan Gato knows how to handle the media.

The world of scissors/paper/rock

Dr. Alice points us to the championships of Scissors/Paper/Rock. It's good for what ails you. Oh come on, if a lizard can play, then you can.

Well, maybe you don't know how. It so happens that I work with people from all over the world, and they're used to oddball culture questions from me. The Tamil guy across the aisle says he used to play scissor/paper/rock in his part of India. The Israelis knew of it too. A Tanzania native hadn't heard of it, but with her past experiences with me she might have thought I was putting her on. I missed my Chinese, Thai and Filipino sources. Others are welcome to contribute their knowledge of its origins.

Of course some people can't leave a good thing alone.

UPDATE: My Thai, Chinese and Filipino sources all say they had variations. The Chinese variant used cloth instead of paper. My Turkish source hadn't heard of it back home.

Attention redheads

Looky here - it seems that there is a female specific pain pathway, and the same gene that gives fair skin and red hair apparently heightens women's responses to analgesics.

This space reserved for a snarky comment.

Harry Zona, meet Mrs. Sippi

Max Power points to this interesting collection of things people believed when they were kids.

Lowe traffic

Derek Lowe said that his traffic was down. I can't imagine why - there probably isn't a blogger who's a better source of info about chemical and biological warfare. I'm sure it's just a coincidence that he gets hits from Baghdad.

This post is about the chemical stuff. He also links to this PDF about chemical warfare. It's 55 pages but might be worth a look if you're really interested.

Income taxes due April 15

Oh joy. At least for Kerry Kerstetter, Tax Guru, who has an interesting blog with tax info and lots of political cartoons. Check it out.

Save energy, starve a terrorist

You don't have to be a ecobabbling tree-hugger or leftist to appreciate energy conservation nowadays. That's especially true now that we're fighting in Iraq - there are plenty of dangerous dragons to be slain there, but the simple fact is that we're fighting those particular ones instead of any of dozens of others is because they're around a major supplier of our oil. (And while you're at it, keep an eye on other major oil suppliers like Nigeria and Venezuela).

Lefties generally support energy conservation, but their prescriptions typically are either nutty lifestyles or govt programs. And they're simply stupid when it comes to their supply side prescriptions. They'll never solve the problem they claim to want to solve.

As for the rest of us, well, nothing much seems to be happening besides bitching about electric bills and the occasional power outage. That's a shame, because there are so many minimally painful ways to curtail power consumption.

Let's start with consciousness. Do you have any idea how many power consuming devices are on in your home now? Do you know how much power they take, or at least which ones are the biggest consumers?

My background is as an engineer from the nuclear power industry, so maybe my expectations are out of whack. But I've been astounded at some of the things I have found otherwise intelligent and motivated people doing which affected their electric or other power consumption drastically.

For instance, do you have pets? Do you provide a heated area for them to stay in? OK fine - but use a spot heat source such as a light bulb, don't heat the entire garage like one couple I know. You can shield the lightbulb so it doesn't dazzle your pets. And they're used for heat more often than you might think, such as to keep the instrumentation from freezing at municipal water tanks.

Do all of your rooms need the same attention? For instance, can you shut off the heat or A/C to the guest bedroom or others? It's easy - just close the vanes on the register. If it doesn't have vanes, replace it with one that does.

Is your furnace filter clean? Clean it or replace it as needed, to improve the air circulation. This is especially significant if you have allergies, or have major dust or dander sources indoors or out.

Do you provide power to outbuildings via buried power lines? Slow shorts on such lines can suck down significant amounts of power long before they blow a breaker or fuse, as another couple I know found out. Hubby had been in a hurry to put in the power, cut some corners at a buried splice, and you should have seen the steam come out of the ground when he dug it back up to fix it.

Do you have a well pump? Make sure it is operating properly and your captive air tank (if any) is properly charged. The pump is a significant power consumer, and it shouldn't be kicking on every time you flush the commode or run the water.

Simply closing shades can work wonders, especially if they are thick enough to provide some insulation. You might be money ahead to close the drapes and turn on a light.

What about those lights? In the winter they're your friend - replace them with higher wattage values. But in the summer you're paying once for the juice to light them, and again to suck the heat back out. So back off on the wattage values. Better yet, use the long life low power bulbs - they look funny and don't always fit into the same spaces old bulbs do, but they can provide the same light for less heat and power and they last a lot longer too.

Do you have a geothermal heat pump system? One couple I know wondered why their bills were sky-high. It turned out that an emergency switch was flipped that had their supplemental electric heat on all the time, so they were using far more power than they should have been.

Do you have an attic fan? Attics can reach very high temperatures, and that heat creeps into your house. Attic fans keep fresh air coming in, lowering attic temperatures and ultimately the cooling demand on your A/C.

Do you have enough insulation? It helps in the summer too. If you're in an old house, you may have less than you think.

What about your hot water heater? Extra insulation can help here, especially in the summer. Take shorter showers and blow the extra humid heat out the bathroom fan or window before you open the bathroom door.

Your dryer? It is vented outdoors, right?

Do you have a setback thermostat? They're cheap and easy to install, and by using them you can make sure the heat and A/C are only on when you need them. For instance, you might set it to lower the heat a bit after you go to bed, come back to normal before you rise, cut back when you go to work, and start back just before you get back. Don't argue with me like one couple did (and they knew I was an engineer - sheesh).

There are many more suggestions here.

OK, so where do you get the stuff to do this? It's probably as close as your hardware store or Walmart.

Where do you get the money? From the money you'll save on power bills.

If you like to shop over the internet, here is a site of interest. I have no connection with them other than some past purchases and a place on their email distribution list. They offer a lot of products which can be helpful in reducing your power consumption and your convenience in doing so. Here's another site. If you have other suggestions, comment here or email me and I'll post them too.

But don't put it off. If our troops can sweat it out in the desert, you can try it a little at home.

Strange associations

Michael Moore's next project about associations between the Bushes and the Bin Ladens is being financed by a company owned by Mel Gibson. Read about it here, from the Corner.

History or Hysteria

...is the title of an NRO post by Victor Davis Hanson. It's all worth a look, but here are two of the better paragraphs:

We should recall that in the first Gulf War we bombed for over 44 days. Critics in 1991 by day 10 were complaining because after the first few nights’ pyrotechnics, Saddam’s army had not crumbled. In turn, earlier swaggering air-advocates had promised victory in three weeks — only to be unjustly slandered that they had failed to end the war in six. Gulf War I is considered a great victory; it required 48 days of air and ground attacks by an enormous coalition to expel the Iraqi army from Kuwait. Our present attempt, with half the force, seeks to end Saddam Hussein altogether — and on day 7 already had him cut off, trapped, and besieged.

In the campaign against Belgrade, the ebullience was gone by day 10 when Milosevic remained defiant. By the fifth week, criticism was fierce and calls for an end to the bombing widespread. On day 77, Milosevic capitulated — and no critics stepped forward to confess that their gloom and doom had been misplaced. Does anyone recall the term “quagmire,” used of Afghanistan after the third week — and how prophets of doom promised enervating stasis, only days later to see a chain of Afghan cities fall? Yet no armchair doom-and-gloom generals were to be found when the Taliban ran and utterly confounded their pessimism. Our talking heads remind me of the volatility of the Athenian assembly, ready to laud or execute at a moment’s notice.

But don't stop there - read it all.

Microchip evolution

An interesting post on Andrew Zolli's blog about a new way to design computer chips. I didn't see any way to link to it directly, so look for the post titled "Moore's Law, Darwin's Method".

Rock chalk Jayhawk!

KU 78, Arizona 75. See ya in Nawlins!

Your abortion dollars at work

I guess anybody can have a bad day:

A consultant gynaecologist who inadvertently removed parts of a woman's kidneys, ovaries, and fallopian tubes during an abortion has been found guilty of serious professional misconduct by the General Medical Council but is allowed to continue working, under conditions.

Dr Andrew Gbinigie, 47, was working his first day at the private Calthorpe Clinic in Birmingham in November 2000 when the abortion took place.

From MedPundit.

How to educate peaceniks

According to Denny Wilson.

Remind me not to tick off Rachel Lucas

Here she has a word for that particularly dysgenic breed known as the antiwar protester. There's plenty more elsewhere on the page.

Conversion

Glenn Reynolds links us to this about an Assyrian who returned to Iraq to oppose the war but changed his mind.

How did that happen? He did something outrageous - he actually asked Iraqis what they really wanted.

Oh no, not that!

CNN says we're threatening to prosecute Iraqis for war crimes.

And then if they still don't stop, presumably we'll use even stronger language. Just who do they think they're going to impress?

And it's legible...

Now Pejman lives here.

Great line

Down at the bottom of this page, someone notes that there was a low turnout for a Bill Clinton speech at the University of Iowa on Wednesday night. As The Prowler put it, "for once the terms Clinton and sellout weren't synonymous".

Boreblogging?

I'm way ahead of you, Vicki, being perhaps the sole source in blogdom for Chinese palindromes, pelvises, librarians, DanceSport and True Love.

And what happened to your picture?

Iraqi suicide murderers kill 5 Marines at checkpoint

I try to keep the language under control on this site, but even profanity pales before the task of describing Iraqi operations in this war. See The Command Post here.

Chinese palindromes

Back in the 1980's some people thought Japan was going to take over the world economically. Not so. No matter what they did, we'd always have them beat with palindromes. Can you even have a Japanese/Mandarin/Cantonese/Korean palindrome?

Enter Google. A googlewhack, perhaps? No, I found 3 sites, and this one says that there are Chinese palindromes. So now we know.

That same site contained this:

Arnold Toynbee once predicted that by around 2050 Chinese characters would become the international standard for visual code used in communications, just as Arabic numerals have become the international standard for written numbers.

I'm thinking he's gonna miss with that one.

I'm dinking around with Chinese at the moment, in part because I'm working with a few native Mandarin speakers nowadays. The differences between it and English are so profound it's amazing. For one, from my sorely limited current vantage point, it appears that everything is monosyllabic and there are no strange genders, declensions and conjugations. But part of the price you pay is the tones - in Mandarin each syllable can be inflected 4 ways, and in Cantonese (less widely spoken, mainly in southern China) there are 7, and each inflection can convey an entirely unrelated concept. What with the script, palindromes might not be so easy, but it's not hard to see that the spoken language would permit some diabolical puns that are at least as difficult to translate.

Another thing I didn't expect was that Mandarin and Cantonese speakers have the same written language. So they can read the same newspapers, but can't talk about them, but they can still communicate by passing notes.

And the text! If you have a Palm or similar device you know that most Latin characters can be rendered intelligibly with one continuous stroke. I don't know what the most complex Chinese characters are, but some that I've seen must take a calligrapher about 20 strokes to do right. It's little wonder that "Chinese" is often used as a modifier indicating complexity or confusion, such as in "Chinese algebra" or "Chinese fire drill".

Given these fundamental differences between English and Chinese, I have to wonder if they don't actually influence the way we use our brains. I suppose the usual suspects would consider it "racist" even to investigate, but I wonder if an EEG or other device could pick up differences in brain usage between a native English speaker using English and a native Mandarin speaker using Mandarin.

Alright, I've exposed enough ignorance for one day. But what else is a blog for?

Googling

I don't know what I'd do without Google. ZDNet has some leads on better ways to use it here.

One of the best thing about it is that it's work safe by default, so you can innocently look up things like "water sports" without getting a bunch of, um, special interest material. But you can turn that off, like I had to to find some of the pelvis stuff a few posts down.

If you're dyslexic, try Elgoog. Some people have way too much time on their hands.

Whose side are the French on?

Many have linked to articles about Dominique de Villepin's unwillingness to state what side the French were rooting for in Iraq. Here's one. It appears that that is a bit unfair, but by now nobody should be giving the French the benefit of the doubt IMO.

Here's an interesting quote:

M de Villepin's central message was that a world dominated by a supremely powerful America was dangerously unstable. Instead, there should be "a number of regional poles" that co-operate with each other.

I don't get it. Is there some respected political theory about this, or is this just more BS to justify knee-jerk anti-American behavior?

Next stop - Syria?

If you want to get rid of Saddam, maybe. This says he is making preparations to go there and has already sent relatives.

The same article says Saddam offered to leave as long as Qusay was left in power. Yeah right.

Link stolen from the Corner on NRO, which should be a regular stop.

Interesting war commentary

From Jed Babbin on NRO.

Don't read this

Glenn Reynolds says he's pro-sodomy, but he won't tell us his position.

You were warned.

Michelle Malkin on Muslims in our military

Right here.

Stolen from Powerline.

AntiAmericans International

Amnesty International fears war crimes have been committed by "both sides" in Iraq. The US has bombed Iraqi TV, and the Iraqis have fired mortars on their own citizens. Is it possible that there's a certain lack of proportionality there?

Perhaps this accounts for the concerns of Hollywood types. Killing people is no big deal, but bombing TV stations affects their ratings.

Who's smarter?

I got this in a forwarded email, allegedly written by Cindy Osborne. Beyond that I don't know who to credit. Here it goes:

The Hollywood group is at it again. Holding anti-war rallies, screaming about the Bush Administration, running ads in major newspapers, defaming the President and his Cabinet every chance they get, to anyone and everyone who will listen. They publicly defile them and call them names like "stupid", "morons", and "idiots". Jessica Lange went so far as to tell a crowd in Spain that she hates President Bush and is embarrassed to be an American.

So, just how ignorant are these people who are running the country? Let's look at the biographies of these "stupid", "ignorant" , "moronic" leaders, and then at the celebrities who are castigating them:

President George W. Bush: Received a Bachelors Degree from Yale University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. He served as an F-102 pilot for the Texas Air National Guard. He began his career in the oil and gas business in Midland in 1975 and worked in the energy industry until 1986. He was elected Governor on November 8, 1994, with 53.5 percent of the vote. In a historic re-election victory, he became the first Texas Governor to be elected to consecutive four-year terms on November 3, 1998 winning 68.6 percent of the vote. In 1998 Governor Bush won 49 percent of the Hispanic vote, 27 percent of the African-American vote, 27 percent of Democrats and 65 percent of women. He won more Texas counties, 240 of 254, than any modern Republican other that Richard Nixon in 1972 and is the first Republican gubernatorial candidate to win the heavily Hispanic and Democratic border counties of El Paso, Cameron and Hidalgo. (Someone began circulating a false story about his I.Q. being lower than any other President. If you believed it, you might want to go to URBANLEGENDS.COM and see the truth.)

Vice President Dick Cheney earned a B.A. in 1965 and a M.A. in 1966, both in political science. Two years later, he won an American Political Science Association congressional fellowship. One of Vice President Cheney's primary duties is to share with individuals, members of Congress and foreign leaders, President Bush's vision to strengthen our economy, secure our homeland and win the War on Terrorism. In his official role as President of the Senate, Vice President Cheney regularly goes to Capital Hill to meet with Senators and members of the House of Representatives to work on the Administration's legislative goals. In his travels as Vice President, he has seen first hand the great demands the war on terrorism is placing on the men and women of our military, and he is proud of the tremendous job they are doing for the United States of America.

Secretary of State Colin Powell was educated in the New York City public schools, graduating from the City College of New York (CCNY), where he earned a Bachelor's Degree in geology. He also participated in ROTC at CCNY and received a commission as an Army second lieutenant upon graduation in June 1958. His further academic achievements include a Master of Business Administration Degree from George Washington University. Secretary Powell is the recipient of numerous U.S. and foreign military awards and decorations. Secretary Powell's civilian awards include two Presidential Medals of Freedom, the President's Citizens Medal, the Congressional Gold Medal, the Secretary of State Distinguished Service Medal, and the Secretary of Energy Distinguished Service Medal. Several schools and other institutions have been named in his honor and he holds honorary degrees from universities and colleges across the country.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld: attended Princeton University on Scholarship (AB, 1954) and served in the U.S. Navy (1954-57) as a Naval aviator ; Congressional Assistant to Rep. Robert Griffin (R-MI), 1957-59; U.S. Representative, Illinois, 1962-69; Assistant to the President, Director of the Office of Economic Opportunity, Director of the Cost of Living Council, 1969-74; U.S. Ambassador to NATO, 1973-74; head of Presidential Transition Team, 1974; Assistant to the President, Director of White House Office of Operations, White House Chief of Staff, 1974-77; Secretary of Defense, 1975-77

Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge was raised in a working class family in veterans' public housing in Erie. He earned a scholarship to Harvard, graduating with honors in 1967. After his first year at The Dickinson School of Law, he was drafted into the U.S. Army, where he served as an infantry staff sergeant in Vietnam, earning the Bronze Star for Valor. After returning to Pennsylvania, he earned his Law Degree and was in private practice before becoming Assistant District Attorney in Erie County. He was elected to Congress in 1982. He was the first enlisted Vietnam combat veteran elected to the U.S. House, and was overwhelmingly re-elected six times.

National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice earned her Bachelor's Degree in Political Science, Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from the University of Denver in 1974; her Master's from the University of Notre Dame in 1975; and her Ph.D. from the Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Denver in 1981. (Note: Rice enrolled at the University of Denver at the age of 15, graduating at 19 with a Bachelor's Degree in Political Science (Cum Laude). She earned a Master's Degree at the University of Notre Dame and a Doctorate from the University of Denver's Graduate School of International Studies. Both of her advanced degrees are also in Political Science.) She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has been awarded Honorary Doctorates from Morehouse College in 1991, the University of Alabama in 1994, and the University of Notre Dame in 1995. At Stanford, she has been a member of the Center for International Security and Arms Control, a Senior Fellow of the Institute for International Studies, and a Fellow (by courtesy) of the Hoover Institution. Her books include Germany Unified and Europe Transformed (1995) with Philip Zelikow, The Gorbachev Era (1986) with Alexander Dallin, and Uncertain Allegiance: The Soviet Union and the Czechoslovak Army (1984). She also has written numerous articles on Soviet and East European foreign and defense policy, and has addressed audiences in settings ranging from the U.S. Ambassador's Residence in Moscow to the Commonwealth Club to the 1992 and 2000 Republican National Conventions. From 1989 through March 1991, the period of German reunification and the final days of the Soviet Union, she served in the Bush Administration as Director, and then Senior Director, of Soviet and East European Affairs in the National Security Council, and a Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. In 1986, while an international affairs fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations, she served as Special Assistant to the Director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In 1997, she served on the Federal Advisory Committee on Gender -- Integrated Training in the Military. She was a member of the boards of directors for the Chevron Corporation, the Charles Schwab Corporation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the University of Notre Dame, the International Advisory Council of J.P. Morgan and the San Francisco Symphony Board of Governors. She was a Founding Board member of the Center for a New Generation, an educational support fund for schools in East Palo Alto and East Menlo Park, California and was Vice President of the Boys and Girls Club of the Peninsula. In addition, her past board service has encompassed such organizations as Transamerica Corporation, Hewlett Packard, the Carnegie Corporation, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, The Rand Corporation, the National Council for Soviet and East European Studies, the Mid-Peninsula Urban Coalition and KQED, public broadcasting for San Francisco. Born November 14, 1954 in Birmingham, Alabama, she earned her bachelor's degree in political science, cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from the University of Denver in 1974; her Master's from the University of Notre Dame in 1975; and her Ph.D. from the Graduate School of International Studie s at the University of Denver in 1981. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has been awarded Honorary Doctorates from Morehouse College in 1991, the University of Alabama in 1994, and the University of Notre Dame in 1995. She resides in Washington, D.C.

So who are these celebrities? What is their education? What is their experience in affairs of State or in National Security? While I will defend to the death their right to express their opinions, I think that if they are going to call into question the intelligence of our leaders, we should also have all the facts on their educations and background:

Barbra Streisand : Completed high school
Career: Singing and acting

Cher: Dropped out of school in 9th grade.
Career: Singing and acting

Martin Sheen Flunked exam to enter University of Dayton.
Career: Acting

Jessica Lange Dropped out college mid-freshman year.
Career: Acting

Alec Baldwin Dropped out of George Washington U. after scandal
Career: Acting

Julia Roberts Completed high school
Career: Acting

Sean Penn Completed High school
Career: Acting

Susan Sarandon Degree in Drama from Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.
Career: Acting

Ed Asner Completed High school
Career: Acting

George Clooney Dropped out of University of Kentucky
Career: Acting

Michael Moore Dropped out first year University of Michigan.
Career: Movie Director

Sarah Jessica Parker: Completed High School
Career: Acting

Jennifer Anniston: Completed High School
Career: Acting

Mike Farrell Completed High school
Career: Acting

Janeane Garofelo Dropped out of College.
Career: Stand up comedienne

Larry Hagman Attended Bard College for one year.
Career: Acting

While comparing the education and experience of these two groups, we should also remember that President Bush and his cabinet are briefed daily, even hourly, on the War on Terror and threats to our security. They are privy to information gathered around the world concerning the Middle East, the threats to America, the intentions of terrorists and terrorist-supporting governments. They are in constant communication with the CIA, the FBI, Interpol, NATO, The United Nations, our own military, and that of our allies around the world. We cannot simply believe that we have full knowledge of the threats because we watch CNN!! We cannot believe that we are in any way as informed as our leaders.

These celebrities have no intelligence-gathering agents, no fact-finding groups, no insight into the minds of those who would destroy our country. They only have a deep seated hatred for all things Republican. By nature, and no one knows quite why, the Hollywood elitists detest Conservative views and anything that supports or uplifts the United States of America. The silence was deafening from the Left when Bill Clinton bombed a pharmaceutical factory outside of Khartoum, or when he attacked the Bosnian Serbs in 1995 and 1999. He bombed Serbia itself to get Slobodan Milosevic out of Kosovo, and not a single peace rally was held. When our Rangers were ambushed in Somalia and 18 young American lives were lost, not a peep was heard from Hollywood. Yet now, after our nation has been attacked on its own soil, after 3,000 Americans were killed by freedom-hating terrorists while going about their routine lives, they want to hold rallies against the war.

Why the change? Because an honest, God-fearing Republican sits in the White House.

Another irony is that in 1987, when Ronald Reagan was in office, the Hollywood group aligned themselves with disarmament groups like SANE, FREEZE and PEACE ACTION, urging our own government to disarm and freeze the manufacturing of any further nuclear weapons, in order to promote world peace. It is curious that now, even after we have heard all the evidence that Saddam Hussein has chemical, biological and is very close to obtaining nuclear weapons, their is no cry from this group for HIM to disarm. They believe we should leave him alone in his quest for these weapons of mass destruction, even though it is certain that these deadly weapons will eventually be used against us in our own cities.

So why the hype out of Hollywood? Could these celebrities believe that since they draw such astronomical salaries, they are entitled to also determine the course of our Nation? That they can make viable decisions concerning war and peace? Did Michael Moore have the backing of the Nation when he recently thanked France, on our behalf, for being a "good enough friend to tell us we were wrong"? I know for certain he was not speaking for me. Does Sean Penn fancy himself a Diplomat, in going to Iraq when we are just weeks away from war? Does he believe that his High School Diploma gives him the knowledge (and the right) to go to a country that is controlled by a maniacal dictator, and speak on behalf of the American people? Or is it the fact that he pulls in more money per year than the average American worker will see in a lifetime? Does his bank account give him clout?

The ultimate irony is that many of these celebrities have made a shambles of their own lives, with drug abuse, alcoholism, numerous marriages and divorces, scrapes with the law, publicized temper tantrums, etc. How dare they pretend to know what is best for an entire nation! What is even more bizarre is how many people in this country will listen and accept their views, simply because they liked them in a certain movie, or have fond memories of an old television sitcom!

It is time for us, as citizens of the United States, to educate ourselves about the world around us. If future generations are going to enjoy the freedoms that our forefathers bequeathed us, if they are ever to know peace in their own country and their world, to live without fear of terrorism striking in their own cities, we must assure that this nation remains strong. We must make certain that those who would destroy us are made aware of the severe consequences that will befall them.

Yes, it is a wonderful dream to sit down with dictators and terrorists and join hands, singing Cumbaya and talking of world peace. But it is not real. We did not stop Adolf Hitler from taking over the entire continent of Europe by simply talking to him. We sent our best and brightest, with the strength and determination that this Country is known for, and defeated the Nazi regime. President John F. Kennedy did not stop the Soviet ships from unloading their nuclear missiles in Cuba in 1962 with mere words. He stopped them with action, and threat of immediate war if the ships did not turn around. We did not end the Cold War with conferences. It ended with the strong belief of President Ronald Reagan... PEACE through STRENGTH.

Who's Smarter?

Of course advanced education is less important to an entertainer than looks or other talents. But IMO with Hollywood we're dealing with a bunch of needy showoffs who want to be taken seriously for their intelligence, and if they're stroked right they'll parrot someone else's lines just as they do in their careers.

Curtain call

After the previous post, I'll have to note that of course there are Kegel exercises for men as noted here and here. Do them enough and next thing you know ol' Willard will be able to start your lawnmower for you.

I'm not a physician, but I have figured out a few things by now. For instance, I believe this quote from the first link above is wrong:

As well, although this method may not sound enthralling, if you stick a finger in your rectum and try contracting your PC muscle, you will know that you're doing so because your finger will feel your anus contracting (pressure). Always try to keep your other muscles (thigh, back and abdominal) relaxed.

It might well be that potty training tends to make us associate two distinct muscle groups. Kegel exercises are intended for the pubococcygeus (PC) muscles. Near as I can tell from this (pictures here), the anus is operated by the coccygei muscles and the puborectalis. You can figure out the ramifications as an exercise.

I suppose it's possible that the ability to manipulate these distinct groups separately is one of those things like curling your tongue, wiggling your ears, etc, that some people can do and others can't. No doubt the govt is waiting with millions of dollars in grants to fund this research. In the meantime, what you do on your own time is your business.

Now back to the women, doggone it. Here's a Kegel exerciser, which looks like something like a shoe tree or a hand brake. I've heard of others too, which I understand are weighted cones. Apparently they go in big end first, and the stronger the PC muscles are the higher you can hold them in.

Is that enough already?

UPDATE: Not to worry, GH - no empirical research was done wrt the theory in the blockquote above.

Pelvic potpourri postscript

After I did my women's pelvises post earlier, Susanna commented that I had neglected men's pelvises. That's OK with me - although I may be resisting cultural trends, I'll unabashedly note my prejudice in favor of the distaff variety. I could compromise and write of my own, but that would be even duller than it sounds. But since then I've encountered a few items on the general topic that I'll share here.

I already published the Moron's Guide to a Larger Penis here. I've always been amused by the ones who offered enlargement "prosthetically". No, I've never tried it (nor needed to, dammit). I'd think keeping it attached would be a challenge. Surely you couldn't fool anyone with it. And then there's that tiny little problem with the lack of nerve endings - if they ever figure out how to make that little interface work the implications are staggering, and not just for the terminally horny.

The blood supply to the penis is complex - both erections and flaccidity are necessary to keep blood flowing as needed. Everybody has heard of impotence, in which erections are rare if not impossible. The flip side of this is priapism, and believe it or not it is worse.

Anybody for spotted dick?

Medpundit offers us this about men who train doctors in prostate exams by submitting to them time after time. I'm happy to hear that there are no visual skills involved. One major concern is to avoid startling the patient, and to avoid anything that even remotely could be construed as erotic (this link also from MedPundit).

One might hope that such a process would escape exploitation in the entertainment business. One would be wrong, for as H. L. Mencken once allegedly wrote, no one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American people. One choice scene was from Tom Hanks' movie "Bachelor Party", in which Hanks' sister is a proctologist. If I remember right, he wanders into the examining room while she is in mid exam with an old man in all fours - she introduces the two and tries to hug him as he tries to keep her at bay.

Oh yeah, I think Mad TV did it once too. This time the victim was a fat guy laying on his side as a bunch of viewers watched his colonoscopy. He was subjected to untold indignities. Then they decided to take a group picture, so they just gave the probe a yank and used it to take the shot. Yow.

The spring 2003 American Heritage of Invention and Technology magazine has an item on America's best collegiate inventors. One of the candidates, Carlo Traverso, invested a non-invasive colon-cancer test that has potential of eliminating many colonoscopies. He gets innumerable comments of course, but the worst part is that he gets unsolicited offers of stool samples from strangers.

I'm gonna quit while I'm behind. We'll try to return to my usual standards (?!) later...

It had to happen

You've been keeping an eye on the Command Post, right?

But it runs 24 hours and scrolls fast, so you might have missed this. You've probably already heard that some of the Iraqi military are getting out of their uniforms to fight - now we have some Iraqi civilians getting into uniforms so they can surrender.

How Nobel of them

If we ever lose free speech in this country, it will be because people are sick of listening to dirtbags like Michael Moore.

Cutting pollution

Kevin McGehee shows us how.

101 Dumbest Moments in Business

Via Jane Galt, right here.

My favorite is #8. "You, get back to work! Oh, never mind..."

Maybe if Jane Galt would have thought of that, Asymmetrical Information would have been on that list of best economics blogs...

Embedded Bloggers

You've heard of the "embedded" journalists? Some of them are blogging. Here's a list.

From Glenn Frazier.

Unilateral war

Jim Miller reminds us of past unilateral operations by other nations.

Via Instapundit.

Proof we're descended from apes

Some of us, anyway. Via Jeff Jarvis we find that, according to Richard Dawkins, George W. Bush is Osama Bin Laden's ally.

Let's hope that Dawkins' beliefs are evolving.

Moron human shields

In the Telegraph, via Command Post.

Or this via UPI, which you may also have seen on Instapundit. I'm sure I saw it on Friday but can't remember where.

Not that NWA readers need it...

Has Chip Rowe actually been reading all of his email? Somehow or another he has assembled The Moron's Guide to a Larger Penis.

Via 3Bruces.

Get your Saddam doll now

Right here, thanks to Michele.

The interactive missile is a nice touch.

Love is...

Well, if you're a woman, it might be something like this.

But we Real Men see things a little differently.

For instance, my alma mater was about 8:1 men to women when I was there, so I often found myself in late night bull sessions with frustrated co-geeks. This often involved evaluating women in ever more spectacular terms. Most of these were of the form "I would < ordeal > just to < reward >".

Typical ordeals were "I'd slide on my ass down a mile of razor blades into a pool of alcohol" or "I'd slither on my belly for a mile over salted broken glass".

The rewards would be things like "jack off in her shadow", "drink her bathwater", "hear her pee in a bucket over the telephone", or perhaps "get a sniff of the exhaust from the truck that carried her dirty laundry". And they got worse from there, particularly the ones involving corn. But I'll spare you the details - see what I do for you?

Incidentally, not once in all those professions of lust did I hear a promise to put toilet seats down. We have to draw the line somewhere.

Keep an eye on The Command Post

Right here. It's a blog with multiple contributors that's keeping up with events in Iraq.

There's also a special version of Popdex dedicated to the war here.

Of course there's always Sgt. Stryker's team for all things military and a lot more besides. PP himself points to this blog by embedded reporters of the BBC.

It's true!

The Advice Goddess notes that men are better than vibrators.

Links between Iraq and al-Qaeda

Alex Knapp has them here, and TV Henry provides even more in the comments.

Via Michele (with one 'l'), who deserves her self-congratulations.

Mobile numbers to be added to 411

I don't think I like this.

Robbed from Robyn.

More than they bargained for

Who wants a job that's the same old same old every day when you can be a librarian?

Link via Bookslut.

Saddam dead?

It seems that some are claiming we got Saddam yesterday. I certainly hope they're right, but that doesn't sound too likely based on what I read in "Saddam's Bombmaker", which I've linked several times before. I've loaned it out, so I'll have to go by memory.

As I recall, Saddam and an entourage showed up at a random household. The owner let them all in and offered to make tea, but a member of the entourage insisted on making it instead. The "host" had some, then woke up the next day to find the guests gone and an envelope of cash left behind.

If that is going on, it will be incredibly difficult to find Saddam unless you're an Iraqi. But I'm betting that someone will drop a dime on him before it's over.

It's an outrage!

Forbes is polling for the best blog about the economy, and Asymmetrical Information isn't one of the choices. There are some good choices there, but still...

Ha! - it appears that 'none of the above' is winning. I voted for Knowledge Problem, Lynne Kiesling's blog.

Collateral damage?

Glenn Reynolds led me to this, which offers an intriguing theory about where Saddam Hussein may be hiding if he's still alive, and not hiding out dressed as a woman in an orphanage.

I say blast it to kingdom come. As for giving warning first, I'll have to think about that...

UPDATE: Steven Den Beste disagrees with the theory above here.

Why we didn't finish the job in 1991

Good stuff at Matt Welch's here and here.

From this book.

Rumination

We're rolling in Iraq, and Lori Ann Byrnes is all over it.

DanceSport 102 - the dances

One of the things that struck me about DanceSport was how utterly arbitrary some of it seemed. Why those dances, and how did they come to be defined the way that they were?

As you might imagine, there are bureaucrats and committees involved. Without going too much into that, the result is a taxonomy of sorts for ballroom dance.

Of course we Americans can't agree with the Europeans on what is what. They have "international" style, vs. our "American" style. Although some names are similar (foxtrot, tango, rumba), the dances are significantly different. The international style typically is less permissive, and if Dancesport achieves full Olympic status, it will be their variety.

Also, there are "smooth" or "standard" dances and there are "rhythm" dances. Examples of the first two are slow foxtrot, waltz, quickstep, Viennese waltz, and tango. For rhythm dances, examples are rumba, bolero, mambo, merengue, samba, cha-cha (or cha-cha-cha in Europe), paso doble, east coast swing, west coast swing, hustle and jive. The smooth dances are snootier and competitions are done in evening dress. Rhythm dances IMO are lot more fun to watch and to do, and the women dress very provocatively.

Some of the dances are "spot" dances - the dancers remain in a fairly limited area. Others, typically the smooth dances but also including samba, are expected to travel around the floor counterclockwise.

Rumba, slow foxtrot, bolero, and waltz are done at slower tempos. East coast swing, cha-cha, quickstep and Viennese waltz are done at fairly frantic tempos, and the latter two at times are almost like a three-legged sprint. Others fall in between.

They have different attitudes too. Foxtrot is "cool". Bolero, waltz, Viennese waltz and rumba are romantic. Tango is...tango. Paso doble is bullfighting - the man is the bullfighter and the woman is his cape. Cha-cha is flirty and mambo leans toward raunchy (think "Dirty Dancing" to the theme from "Sex in the City"). East coast swing and jive are just, well, hell-raising.

All of them have their own type of music. Waltzes and Viennese waltzes have time signatures that are multiples of 3, and the rest are normally in 4.

Suppose you want to give this a try. The easiest ones to start with are probably foxtrot and rumba - neither is particularly fast. East coast and west coast swing are the most popular, but are more energetic and so might not be the place to start if you're in really bad shape. I'm speaking of the American style - I haven't tried the international stuff.

If you want to try tango, be aware that there are 3 flavors - American style, international style, and Argentine. The last is the most authentic but also the hardest to find instructors, partners and competitions.

That ought to keep you busy for a while. Give it a try!

Human shields in Iraq - are some of them catching on?

See Andrea Harris for details.

DanceSport 101

About a year and a half ago I woke up with a wild hair and thought I'd try something different. I couldn't afford to go to another planet, so I settled for ballroom dance.

It wasn't quite what I expected. As I learned more several things stood out. Of course it's sociable. If you need to you can start really easy (moving slowly, low impact), but you can turn it into a very strenuous workout if you like. You can make it as informal or formal as you like, and you can do it pretty much for your whole life. If you're a showoff it's a great opportunity. You can even turn it into a profession, and maybe one day compete in the Olympics with it. What could be wrong with that?

But it isn't you, eh Stud? Sounds a little, um, light in the loafers, like with the hockey player turned figure skater in "The Cutting Edge"? Well, if dancing is enough to threaten you then you already have issues - get over it.

If you don't live too far out in the sticks you can probably learn some basics with swing, cha-cha, foxtrot and waltz. If nothing else, they can help to fend off disaster in social events you might have been avoiding. It's not uncommon for some clubs to offer free salsa or swing lessons at the beginning of the evening, so if you're adventurous enough you can just show up and cut loose.

Dance studios often offer group lessons for various dances. Here in St. Louis, Just Dancing offers these for rumba, foxtrot, waltz, swing (east and west coast) and others at various times of the week (also tap, hip hop, ethnic and other stuff).

Then there are private lessons. It's not cheap, but for some of us it's the right way to go, especially if you're intending to get serious about it.

You can also take part in competitions. In these the contestants are divided into several skill levels and age groups for each type of dance. The organizers play appropriate music for a minute or two, the contestants dance, and professional judges assess them.

The competitions might include people competing for scholarships or professionals building resumes. If you think dancing isn't worthy of the Olympics, just watch for a while. That's what I was doing last week while I was away from blogging - I was watching and participating in the St. Louis Star Ball that I've been plugging. (How did I do? Well, I won't be turning pro just yet...).

So what are the dances? Stick around - more will be coming later.

Coincidence?

By now you've probably heard about the UN weapons inspector who was killed in Iraq. He had an auto accident involving a truck.

OK, I don't need a bumper sticker to tell me that bad things sometimes happen. But then I thought about Dr. Khidhir Hamza's book, "Saddam's Bombmaker". In it Hamza noted several cases in which people who had fallen out of favor with Saddam had died in accidents involving trucks.

Stay tuned...

Next time try "Nude for Peace"

You're cold, Emperor Misha. And since 9/11, so am I.

Don't miss the comments.

Last Call for the Star Ball

Here in St. Louis at the Renaissance by the airport, tonight through Sunday.

Pelvic potpourri

Whenever I'm looking for a cheap post, I go rip off Sydney Smith, our irreplaceable Medpundit. Here she points us to some women who teach medical students as they submit to pelvic exams. (If they exist, we were spared knowledge of men who do the same for prostate exams). She also links to the e-pelvis.

Lacking the requisite plumbing, I can't speak directly of pelvic exams. I understand that it involves a speculum, a device renowned for its coldness. It is inserted into the vagina and then a ratcheting device holds it open. There's also soundproofing to keep down the echoes.

No, I made up that last part. But I really have known some gossipy small-town nurses who would, um, speculate and even count how many clicks the ratchet on the speculum would make on various women they knew. Now that's a conversation starter.

Whether coming or going, you can use strength and control in your pelvic muscles. For this you need Kegel exercises.

So what else do you want to know about pelvises/pelvi/pelves?

Day By Day

Dean Esmay interviews Chris Muir, the genius behind the comic strip Day by Day. Don't miss it.

The Home Front

...is a new site in support of our armed services. Check them out.

Of particular interest is a centralized list of employers and what they are doing more than what is required by law in support of reservists. I for one will start irritating at least three companies to get their names on the list.

From the credits page:

The idea for this site was Susanna Cornett's, and Mike Hendrix did the design and construction. Comments and suggestions may be e-mailed to Susanna at thegoodguys2003-at-hotmail-dot-com and to Mike at mike-at-coldfury-dot-com.

We'd like to thank these folks for their support and encouragement, and for providing us with information and links.

In no particular order:

Michele Catalano

Paul Palubicki

Except I had to add this title manually until I RTFM

Alright, I'm giving w.bloggar a test ride. So far it looks terrific - I have about 5 minutes of download and install time tied up in it with a scuzzy old 56K dialup connection. I think I'm going to like it.

What does it do? I won't do it justice - just click the link above.

Pave France!

Right here. Don't miss the jokes and other abuse.

Sure it's over the top. But then if you want to see what kind of slimeball Chirac is, read Khidhir Hamza's "Saddam's Bombmaker".

And then read Michael Ledeen's post in NRO about what might really be going on. And David Frum's diary entry about a Hubert Vedrine performance.

Soft core smut?

Some locals are protesting the spring break edition of the Abercrombie and Fitch catalog. As before, it is full of nude models, often in mixed groups and provocative positions. I can't speak in detail about the pictures because I only saw what they showed on TV, but the stuff I've seen posted at their mall stores was smutty enough when you consider it was posted in a public place.

Yeah yeah, Europeans post stuff like this all the time. I remember a trip there when I was in grade school and being astounded at seeing nudity on the public airwaves. But I'm happy to say that this isn't Europe, and after watching the behavior of many Europeans lately I say "viva la difference".

A few years ago when the Infiniti came out (I think it was the Infiniti), none of the early ads showed the car they were advertising. This was innovative if not necessarily advisable. I never did hear how well that campaign worked, but it did strike me as perverse at the time.

So now A&F is trying to sell clothes with nudes?

Oh, it'll get them attention alright. Maybe the message is "unless you look like this, you'd better cover up with A&F clothes".

Slow week coming

I don't know how much time I'll have this week for blogging because of crunch time on a project. But it does give me an excuse for some blogrolling:

For serious stuff, try Clayton Cramer, Stuart Buck, Howard Bashman, Lynne Kiesling, Erin O'Connor and Winterspeak.

Besides Lileks and Instapundit, my two favorite family guys are Tony Woodlief and Terry Oglesby (and while you're checking out the Possum's hospitality, take a tour of the Axis of Weevil). If it's an eligible guy you're after, of course there's Acidman.

For comic relief try 3 Bruces, or of course Scrappleface.

To wander off left of center, how about War Liberal or Armed Liberal?

If you want controversy, odds are you'll find it at Gene Expression or Omphalos.

Women? Ah yes, there are some I haven't linked to lately. You've probably already been to Michele's site. You have to like Asparagirl's attitude. Something is up with Moxie. Then there's party goddess Vicki and Janis down South, or Dawn in Ohio, or Robyn in FL (hope you're feeling better). And the inimitable Page.

Fairly recent additions to the blogroll include Beaker, Blaster, Michael Ubaldi and Andrew Zolli.

For international stuff, there's Brussels Blog, Ibidem, Dilacerator and of course Tim Blair.

For science and technology you can't go wrong with Jay Manifold, Rand Simberg, Charles Murtaugh and Derek Lowe. What the heck, how about Beth Skwarecki? For medical stuff, try MedPundit and MedRants. Or check out Gizmodo for your gadget needs.

I could probably do this for days and end up with something like The Talking Dog's list of blogs (which is lefty enough to somehow omit people like Lileks and Steven Den Beste last time I looked, as well as NWA). What the heck, I left out plenty of people too, but as I mentioned time is a bit scarce this week.

And if the group above isn't enough to keep you busy, you're probably spending too much time in front of your PC anyway.

Toren Smith is back

...so check him out.

Indexing music

"You know that song that goes....?" I say that all the time, and I have a fairly good memory for that stuff. I might even attempt to whistle the song in question, but that can be a challenge with things like, say, "Flight of the Bumblebee".

Even then it doesn't help much given alternate names, sampling, etc. What is it, the theme from the Lone Ranger or the William Tell Overture? And in case anybody remembers MC Hammer and Rick James, how likely was it that you'd know that "Can't Touch This" sampled "SuperFreak"?

So unless I happen to run into the right people, how do I find a song I'm trying to remember from a few bars or musical phrases? Is there some sort of search tool for this?

Housing, dead peasants and rent control

The firm of Galt & Dreck has a couple of interesting posts about housing valuations here and here. (I'd hate it if Asymmetrical Information suddenly disappeared - can I insure against this?)

Alright you guys, please continue: what would happen to the economy of New York City if they got rid of rent control?

Unless you're a fetus...

Dodd on the value of human life.